


you suck at love

by brominewaterandtears



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Fluff, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26898658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brominewaterandtears/pseuds/brominewaterandtears
Summary: Jos comes to the realisation that he's in love with Joe, and finds help from an unexpected source on how to confess to him.
Relationships: Jos Buttler/Joe Root
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	you suck at love

"I think I'm in love with Joe," Jos says nervously, wringing his hands as he looks at the floor.

After a beat Louise looks up from where she's watering her orchids. "I know." She says simply, shrugging.

Jos watches her with his mouth agape as she continues moving around and watering the rest of the houseplants. "I feel like there should be more of a reaction there, I just told you I'm in love with someone else. Well, in addition to you." He adds on the end, and Louise laughs.

"Honey I could see it coming from years ago. I have plenty of best friends, and I don't act the way you do with Joe around any of them."

"Wait. So are you okay with this?" Jos asks in confusion, feeling like he's missed something along the line.

Louise shrugs again. "I knew you had a big heart from when we started dating. It's one of the reasons I liked you so much- you love so widely and unconditionally. As long as you still love me, and you do, right-" she checks and Jos immediately nods, "then I honestly don't mind if you want to pursue something with him."

Jos feels a wave of love well up in his chest as he looks at his wife, hip cocked and blonde hair falling over one shoulder. He steps forward and lifts her up in his arms, spinning her around. She squeals in surprise, clutching her watering can in one hand.

"You're the best wife ever." He whispers into her neck, planting a soft kiss on her cheek as he lets her down.

She grins up at him as she smooths the wrinkles out her shirt. "Damn right I am."

~

They sit down together later in order to devise a plan so Jos can woo Joe.

"Just go up to him and tell him how you feel, you don't need to make a big deal out if it." Louise advises, fixing Georgia's collar absently as she fusses in her lap.

"Well I guess not, but I want to at least make a little bit of a deal out of it. I remember how happy he got when his ex got flowers delivered to him- I think he likes romantic gestures." Jos says thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair.

"Oh I remember the flowers, they were from Stacey right?" At Jos' nod she continues. "I never really liked her, she told me my eyeliner wings were atrocious. I mean she wasn't wrong but she didn't have to say it to my face." Louise complains, wrinkling her nose and Jos nods along in sympathy.

"I never really liked her all too much either," he muses, but that was more because of jealousy rather than her insulting his makeup skills.

To be fair she wasn't the greatest at applying makeup anyway, and if even Jos could tell that it must mean it was truly an awful job. He doesn't judge though, he's spent enough time watching his wife stab her face with various pointy objects and brushes over the years to know that makeup is a hard and demanding practise.

"Do you want to get flowers then?" She asks, breaking him out of his musings.

"Yeah, that's a shout. I could get them sent to the changing rooms, write a note on them?"

Georgia hits her rattle against the dining table and Louise shushes her quietly. "What kind of flowers does he like?" She asks, rocking Georgia gently against her.

He scratches his stubble in thought. "Not really sure to be honest, it's not as if we talk about our favourite flowers often. I heard him talking about chrysanthemums a while ago very animatedly. Maybe that means he likes them?"

Jos doesn't really remember much of the conversation he'd overheard, but surely Joe wouldn't be talking that passionately about a flower if he didn't like it? 

"That's fine then, just get a bunch of chrysanthemums delivered. Now what about the note?"

They sit there for about half an hour, trying to come with something suitable to write. Louise ends up putting Georgia down for a nap halfway through the session, joking that their baby is tired of watching her parents be idiots.

Jos sweeps a ball of scrunched up paper out his way, sighing as he rests his head on the table. "I don't know how to flirt anymore, I'm a lost cause." He pops up his head slightly to look at his wife. "What did I say to you when I asked you out?"

Louise wrinkles her nose as she recalls the memory. "Your friend dragged me onto a double date with you so he could flirt with my best friend. When you turned around and saw me outside the movie theatre you tripped and fell headfirst into a bin."

Jos winces. "Not the smoothest of first impressions, was it? I think my brain repressed that memory to protect me."

He stretches in his seat, groaning as his back clicks. "Fuck it, I'm not putting a note in. If I somehow still managed to convince you to go out with me after I fell headlong into a bin I'm sure I'll manage to ask Joe out without writing anything down."

"Is Joe as superficial as me though?" Louise says in mock consideration. "I was about to turn and walk away after your display, but then I saw your arms sticking out the bin and really it was all over. I pretty much just married you for your biceps." She says seriously, unable to fight the smile off her face as Jos flexes his arms in response.

"Do you reckon I should just walk up to him with the flowers and start flexing my biceps then?"

"I certainly don't think you would hear any complaints." Louise mutters appreciatively, and Jos laughs.

~

He arranges for the flowers to be delivered to the changing rooms after a training session. He figures he'll gauge Joe's reaction to the gesture, then take him aside privately and confess if everything goes well.

And surely everything will, because how can you mess up something as simple as delivering flowers? 

Mark pops his head around the changing room door, holding a bouquet in his hands. "Joe, reception said they had a delivery for you." He says, thrusting the flowers forward to Joe.

Joe smiles when he sees the bouquet, delighted but confused. "For me?"

Jonny playfully nudges his shoulder. "Got a secret admirer, eh?"

Joe flushes pink, brushing off the team's oohs and teasing ribbing. He leans closer to get a better look at the flowers, then suddenly stands up with a shout of surprise, backing away.

Jos looks up in alarm.

Does he not like the flowers after all? He thinks, desperately. Does he think chrysanthemums are ugly? Do they remind him of Stacy? Was Stacy holding a chrysanthemum when they broke up, forever leading him to tragically associate them with her?

"Get those away from me," Joe says hurriedly, pushing the bouquet away.

Mark backtracks worriedly, holding the flowers behind his back. "You alright?"

Joe shakes his head, turning to sneeze loudly into his elbow. "Allergies. Shit-" he sneezes again, eyes red. "Who's trying to fucking kill me by giving me chrysanthemums?"

Oh dear.

Oh dear oh dear.

Jos leaps into action, quickly taking charge. "Jonny, take Joe to the team doctor and have him look him over. Mark, give me those." He takes the bouquet from Mark and hurriedly jogs to the wastepaper basket by the break room, throwing them in.

Behind him, Jonny leads Joe by the hand to the medical bay, Joe squinting to see through red and puffy eyes.

Jos winces, watching them go. 

As far as romantic ventures go, this has got to be the worst. At least with Louise he hurt himself instead of his object of affection.

~

"So flowers were a bust." Jos says forlornly, and Georgia babbles at him with an unimpressed face as if to say 'no shit Sherlock'

"I know, I know, I should've made sure he didn't have any allergies or anything before I got them, that's on me." He acknowledges, and Georgia seems marginally more pleased with this. "Should I look up his medical record to make sure I don't poison him again?"

"And how would you obtain his medical record?" Louise asks in amusement from where she's standing by the stove.

"Your uncle's a doctor at the King Cross hospital, I'm sure he could access the necessary files. It could be like an illegal handoff, with you scaling down the hospital skylight to retrieve the files he leaves out for you."

Louise snorts at the idea. "I'm a Pilates instructor, not a bloody MI6 agent."

"I think skill in flexibility is a big overlap between the two jobs," he counters, and Louise hums, conceding the point.

"Putting aside my potential career in MI6, have you thought about what you're going to do next?" She asks, gathering her fried egg under the spatula and tossing it into the plate next to her.

Jos shrugs. "I was thinking of giving him some nice chocolates, but I don't want to almost assassinate him again."

Louise taps her chin in thought. "No, that wouldn't be great, would it?" She snaps her fingers, suddenly remembering something. "Actually, I think we have some hypoallergenic chocolate that your aunt gave us last Christmas. That would work right?"

"That's perfect, remind me to give my aunt a thousand kisses the next time I see her." Jos sighs in relief. Louise turns around with her plated fried egg, lifting one hand off the bottom to give her husband a celebratory high five.

"We've got this."

~

They did not.

Joe gagged when he tried the hypoallergenic chocolate, saying that it was too dry and crumbly for his taste as he put it back in the parcel it'd arrived in. Mark had wondered aloud if his 'secret admirer' was in fact an enemy that hated him, and Joe blanched, deciding to not open anything delivered to him for a while.

(In the subsequent training session Jos may or may not have 'accidentally' dropped several catches off Mark, just to get back at him for inadvertently foiling half his plans).

Finding his favourite DVD nestled in his changing room cubby just made Joe cry, apparently reminding him of his mum and how long it had been since he'd travelled across the country to see her.

So Jos wiped his tears and the next week, left a lovely food basket with an assortment of fresh treats outside his door to cheer him up.

The basket attracted a swarm of bees, and Joe showed up to the next training session swollen and glowering, glaring anyone in his path down.

Jonny whistled as he walked in the room. "Damn, who have you pissed off enough to get these kinds of dedicated sabotage attempts?"

Jos put his head in his hands mournfully as the dressing room discussed who Joe's secret enemy was, wondering how it had all managed to go this badly wrong.

~

"Maybe I should just give up." Jos sighs.

Louise shakes her head, chewing quickly on the pineapple in her mouth so she can speak. "He's interested in you, I can feel it. Forget being anonymous and slowly building up to it, confess at the PCA's."

Jos hums, considering the idea.

"I don't know, if it goes wrong I don't want to be going around moping while everyone is celebrating their awards." He says, but Louise just rolls her eyes.

"Oh come on you big baby, he's not going to say no. In the unlikely case he does I'll fake a stomach bug and we can go home and get you a tub of ice cream to cry into."

Jos looks up at her. "I definitely like that idea."

Louise smiles, finishing off the rest of her pineapple. "Knew you would. Let's go get your man."

~

The night of the PCA's arrives, and Joe rocks up to the event with EpiPens stashed in his suit pockets and pseudo body armour under his dress shirt. "You can never be too prepared," he tells Jos, eye twitching wildly.

Jos wonders if he should be offering to pay for therapy expenses for what his romantic ventures have apparently put Joe through.

Louise plants a quick kiss on his cheek before darting away to leave the two alone, flashing a quick thumbs up as she makes her way over to Ben's wife. 

Jos takes a deep breath.

He can do this.

He turns around to face Joe, ready to confess and impart his deepest feelings.

"Joe, I just wanted to say-" he opens his eyes, to find empty space in front of him. 

He's lost Joe.

"Fuck," Jos mutters to himself, scanning the room to try and find out where Joe went during the twenty millisecond conversation he had with his wife. 

He catches a blond head of hair by the stage, but it turns out to just be Sam, laughing with Jason about something and seemingly attempting to flirt. From the looks of it his signals are not being recognised, and Jos snorts in amusement as he makes his way past the pair.

They'll get their act together one day, he thinks, before immediately sobering up as he remembers he's meant to be on the lookout for the other half of his own pair.

"Have you seen Joe?" He asks a freckled, lanky man who he vaguely recognises as an opener from Kent, sipping wine by himself on the corner of the floor.

The man chokes on his wine upon realising who's just spoken to him, blinking quickly. "Sorry, Joe? As in Joe Root, test captain?" He clarifies, and Jos nods quickly.

"Oh uh, I think I saw him by the food table. He was eating a lot of shrimp." He stutters. Jos looks over to the food table, where he can indeed see a skinny figure with dirty blonde hair piling their plate high with shrimp.

Jos grins, looking back at him. "Thanks!" He says brightly, and the boy blushes. "I'll tell him to give you a Test debut next year or something as compensation." He claps him on the back and leaves, making a beeline towards the shrimp laden Test captain.

Joe is humming cheerfully as he surveys the table, stacked plate in one hand. He reaches forward to pinch some kebabs when Jos comes up behind him.

"Why on earth do you need this much shrimp?" He breathes into Joe's ear. Joe immediately starts, plate almost sliding onto the floor before Jos catches it.

"Jesus Christ, give a man some warning!" Joe squawks indignantly, a full shiver running down his body. "You know shrimp is my comfort food."

Jos wrinkles his nose in confusion. "Well, yes, but you don't normally need fifty of them to be comforted. Why would you be nervous today anyway, we go to the PCA's every year, it's nothing new."

Joe sighs heavily. "It's not about the PCA's, it's about something I promised myself I'd do tonight. But I just can't bring myself to do it."

"Is that something related to giving yourself diarrhoea from excessive shrimp consumption?"

Joe elbows him in the ribs, and Jos dodges a second blow through wheezing laughter.

"This is a serious matter!" Joe pouts, which only makes Jos grin wider.

"Alright, what is it then." He asks. "Maybe I can help?"

Joe averts eye contact, suddenly looking nervous. "Uh, no. Don't think you can help with this. Not your, um, skillset."

Jos frowns. "Well-"

"Is that Ben over here?" Joe suddenly interrupts. "Sorry, I have to go to talk to him about something, it's been ages since we caught up." He hurriedly excuses himself, power-walking over to where Ben is.

"You saw him yesterday!" Jos calls after him confusion.

He looks down to see that Joe's shrimp laden plate is still sitting on the buffet table. "And you left your mountain of shrimp!"

Joe again pretends not to hear him, but visibly deflates in the distance at the last sentence.

~

"Why does he keep running away from me?" Jos hisses to Louise later that evening, watching Joe slip away once again from where he'd attempted to corner him.

Louise, who at this point has downed perhaps one too many sparkling champagne drinks, shrugs loosely as she sways on his arm. "You said he had something he needed to do tonight, right? Maybe… maybe he's going to confess to you! And he's running because he's scared." She giggles distantly at the thought of the two of them having some sort of confess-off.

"He absolutely cannot confess to me tonight, I've been working for a month on my confession," Jos says in outrage, "he can't just come in and confess first."

"Go confess to him before he gets enough confidence to do it then." Louise pats his chest in support.

Jos eyes Joe over at the other end of the room, standing at the edge of a circle with Stuart and Eoin. "I will. I'm going to confess to him so hard, he won't even know what's hit him."

"You do that dear." Louise encourages absently, moving away to go refill her champagne once more. 

Jos takes in a deep breath, striding purposefully towards Joe. He latches a hand in the back of the captain's suit collar and pulls gently, tugging him back.

Joe looks up in surprise, but Jos just shakes his head at his questions until he drags them both over to a quiet area of the floor behind the stage curtains.

"You've been running away from me all night," Jos accuses, then immediately wonders why he started with that and not confessing as he'd intended.

Joe sighs, looking down. "Yeah, I'm sorry. It's just… the thing I need to do, it kind of involves you. And I don't really think I can go through with it, so I've been avoiding you." 

"That's okay," Jos reassures, "you know you can take all the time you need, right? I have something i need to say anyway if you don't really want to do your thing."

He expects Joe to acquiesce at this point, setting the stage for Jos' confession, but instead he looks up determinedly, a light in his eyes.

"No, I… I need to stop being a child about this. I should just go through with it. The truth is Jos, I know you're with Louise and you're really happy, but I-"

"No!" Jos shouts suddenly, and Joe starts, looking almost tearful. "Wait, no, fuck, not like that. I just don't want you to confess before me. I've tried for a month to confess to you without it going wrong, I'm determined to make the first move here as a point of pride." He explains, and Joe deflates in relief.

"You want to confess? So you do actually like me back?" Joe confirms and Jos nods quickly.

"I've been trying to confess for about three months, but every attempt went horribly wrong." He admits.

Joe gapes at him. "Wait you're the person that's been sending me flowers and chocolates? I thought they were trying to kill me!"

Jos winces. "It was supposed to be romantic. It did not turn out that way."

"No, it didn't." Joe looks at him with a faint flush on his cheeks. "But I really like the effort anyway. So did y-" he suddenly stops as if remembering something. "Wait, what about Louise?"

Jos can't hold back a smile at the worry on his face. "She was my biggest supporter when it came to confessing to you. She knows, and she's fine with it. I love her, and I'll always love her forever… but I think I also love you too."

Joe looks startled, but pleased. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Joe's lips curve into a small, secret smile. "Well I can definitely live with that."

"So is that okay then or-" Jos begins to ask, but is cut off as Joe fists a hand in his collar and brings him down for a kiss.

~

"Mum! Mum!" Louise totters her way over to her mum, trying to avoid stepping on any feet with her heels. 

Her mother looks up in surprise, bringing Louise into a hug as she sees her. "Hello dear. I must say this Christmas party is an improvement on last year, the decorations are-"

Louise waves her hands, impatiently shushing her. "Forget about the decorations, they're not important. Do you know a change in our lives that's actually hugely important?" She asks, face pink with excitement and a beaming smile.

Her mother eyes her flatly. "What have you done now? You're always up to something when you're that excited."

"Lies and slander." Louise proclaims. "Anyway, I'll just show you," she says, whirling around and searching for someone across the room.

"That girl is a hurricane." She mutters to herself, watching as Louise gestures for Jos and another man standing next to him to come over.

"Mum," she beams widely, and her mother can already feel a headache coming on at whatever she's about to say. "This is my husband Jos, as you know, and his boyfriend Joe."

Joe raises an awkward hand of greeting, and her mother sighs. "You're going to have your hands full with this lot, good luck." She says, patting his shoulder.

Joe laughs in surprise, lips scrunching up mischievously. "I think I'll give them a run for their money."

Louise's mother fights a smile off at that, looking directly at Jos. "You really have a thing for gorgeous hurricane blondes don't you?"

He grins fondly, eyes sliding to the two of them. "I guess I do." He tilts his head consideringly. "Actually, I even have three beautiful blondes in my life."

Louise and Joe raise their eyebrows in affront until they whirl around to the point he's gazing at.

There, on the carpet, Georgia is banging her rattle happily against the floor as she babbles to herself. She squeals with excitement when she spots the group of adults looking at her, delighted with their attention.

"Fair enough," Joe says softly, "you definitely lucked out the most there."

Jos smiles as he goes to pick Georgia up, the warm feeling of contentment settling in his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Who the hell is Jos Buttler, in this house we simp for Louise and Georgia


End file.
